War Footing

ARTICLES ABOUT WAR FOOTING BY DATE - PAGE 3

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh government has sanctioned Rs 29.53 crore for completing the works under Union government's perspective plan for modernising jails. Out of these funds Rs 65.11 lakh has been allocated for construction of new jails, Rs 14.15 crore for improvement of jails and construction of new barracks, Rs 1.88 crore for drinking water and sanitation arrangements, an official release on Saturday said. The government has also sanctioned Rs 2.21 crore for construction works and ensure their completion in the current financial year.

NEW DELHI: State-run mobile operator BSNL is fast running out of capacity and has just a little over one million lines to accommodate new subscribers. The situation has prompted the company to act on a war-footing to expand capacity in its existing network, pending the fructification of its tender to increase capacity by over 23 million lines -- Advance Purchase Order for a major part of which has been issued to Ericsson and Nokia. Existing capacity is just little over one million connections for the entire nation, other than Delhi and Mumbai where MTNL offers services, highly placed sources said, adding that the corporation will talk to existing vendors for providing add-on capacity.

PATNA: The railways have incurred losses of over Rs 10 crore due to the floods in Bihar. "The damage to the East Central Railways, under which most areas of Bihar fall, by way of track and infrastructure damage and revenue loss on account of suspension of train services has crossed the Rs 10 crore marks," a railway source said. ECR Deputy General Manager A K Chandra told PTI that railway tracks suffered serious damage in a stretch of about 300 km. Repair work had been completed on 240 km and restoration was being done on a war footing in remaining areas.

IOC intends to go in for biodiesel in a big way and would ask for land from states for plantation. Belated though this decision which should have been at least three years before. It is a wrong one for PSU to venture in this line rather leaves it to private entrepreneurs who have expertise and experience, such as, procuring oil seeds and tobacco leaves from farmers, since functioning of cooperatives allotted with land are in doubts about sustainability. Nevertheless, 40 million ha of fallow land so far identified available for plantation will yield 50-60 tonnes of oil or 50% of crude import.

ALLAHABAD: Railways would speed up electrification work to reduce dependence on diesel, prices of which have gone up, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad has said. "The steep hike in prices of diesel will obviously hit the Railways hard. It is estimated that it will add an extra burden of about Rs 400 crore. In order to tide over this, we are planning to do away with our dependence on diesel by taking up electrification work on a war footing," he told reporters on Thursday night at the Allahabad junction, where his special Chhapra-New Delhi train made a brief stop-over.

The debate on the Sardar Sarovar project (ET, April 25) seems to completely ignore two of the three issues flagged. How come? Also, Mr Ananthamurthy's lament that our rulers are insensitive to brave and non-violent struggles is intriguing. The government was not exactly 'deaf' and 'blind' to Ms Patkar's struggle. The PM himself responded. The state governments responded. An ad-hoc group of ministers was made operational on a war footing. M H Rao

BANGALORE: You don't have to go to your office any more, the work lands in your lap(top) and you make moolah too! Software companies are encouraging this novel work-from-home culture and the trend is catching up fast amongst techies. While MNCs like Accenture, IBM, Texas Instruments and Intel have been doing this globally and at their Indian arms too, Indian software house Wipro is now taking telecommuting on a war footing. Telecommuting is a flexible scheduling arrangement that permits the employee to work from another location (usually home)

NEW DELHI: The show is not over for the industry on the ITC tax imbroglio with the government. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is taking the matter seriously even after a week when the government promulgated an ordinance empowering revenue authorities to change excise rules retrospectively which in effect implies that ITC would have to fork out an extra Rs 450 crore to the government while forfeiting its earlier deposit of Rs 350 crore....

MUMBAI: The frenzy around farm loans has set into play different forces, throwing up absurd as well as feasible proposals. First the absurd. Last week the new Andhra chief minister met the Reserve Bank of India governor YV Reddy, asking him to consider creating a special fund to give loans to farmers at 3-4%. The minister is shaken by the suicide cases and chronic indebtedness of small farmers. However, the proposal entails an explicit interest subsidy to be borne by the government or the central bank.

BANGALORE: About 26% of the population in India suffers from a silent disease ? Allergic Rhinitis. And the trend is on the ascent with rising levels of stress , increased consumption of junk food and the individual's falling resistance levels. Rhinitis is an inflammation of the nasal mucous membrane, often due to an allergic reaction to pollen, dust or other airborne diseases. According to Dr Ruby Pawankar, chairperson, Asia-Pacific Affiliate, ARIA-WHO Initiative, even the global figures are rather alarming.